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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoesephBear" data-source="post: 5785706" data-attributes="member: 98378">Well, to a lesser extent at least. Basically, you cannot use the lore behind illithids. Their physical design is blatantly derived from Cthulhu and his spawn, which is in public domain now. Their lore is an original work though. Heck, if I wanted to make a mindflayer race for my own ogl game, I would just call them lesser spawn of Cthulhu and run with the original Lovecraft lore. That's essentially what they visually are, albeit no wings and man-sized. Besides, all of Lovecraft's best stuff is in public domain now."Illithid" and "mindflayer" are original words and are copyrighted, maybe kinda sorta. Final fantasy games and Dark Souls have had blatant "mindflayers" and have called them as such. However, Wotc can't feasibly sue a japanese game company. Unfortunately, most people on enworld are not japanese game companies.I guess while I'm at it I'll blow off some steam about some other brand identity monsters.Beholder / Gauth: It's a man-eating floating eyeball with tentacles that shoots lasers. A common trope of pulp sci-fi. It would not be hard to build a legit beholder clone based on those old tropes, and you could even call it a Beholder due to the name being so cliche ("Eye of the Beholder" being a dirt-old saying and all that).Carrion Crawler: It's a tentacled man-eating slug/caterpillar thing. How original. Change its ecology to something interesting and give it a different name and you have a legit clone.Displacer Beast: It's bloody Coeurl from Black Destroyer. Give it some e-mag powers, make it an intelligent being, and give it a pronounceable name. Boom. Clone completed.Kuo-toa: Savage fish-men. Does this even need addressing? Use Deep Ones if you want a Lovecraftian angle.Slaad: Giant evil toad-men. Really? Original product identity? See kuo-toa.Yuan-ti: Sorry WoTC, Conan beat you to the whole snake-men angle. Next.Umberhulk: It's a giant bipedal stag beetle. Rework the gaze into something else (toxic fumes? magic ray?) and you're good.The only truly original ones seem to be the two Gith races. I haven't really seen anything else like them.Almost all of D&D's monsters are rooted in non-copyrightable concepts, making it easy to make your own clone for your own product. Sure you can't rip WotC's monster lore wholesale, but that just means you have to come up with your own cool twist. And cool ideas are in abundant supply in this hobby.</blockquote>

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